Footsteps
by ariel2me
Summary: For a tumblr prompt - Three fathers, three sons, and following in the footsteps. (Ned-Robb, Steffon-Stannis, Aerys-Rhaegar)


**Robb**

"Where is the honor in hiding the truth?" He had asked his father once, seemingly in regard to other people and other things, separate, distinct and unrelated to their family. But perhaps his father had known what he was truly asking, after all.

"There are different kinds of honor," Ned Stark had replied. "Our own, of course. But also other people's. Where is the honor in sullying someone else's honor in order to keep our own's intact? "

Robb had understood, without asking all the questions he had really wanted to ask. And he finally saw too another unspoken truth – it was not his place to ask those questions of his father in the first place. His mother, yes. And Jon, certainly. But not Robb. It was a dance between the three of them - Ned Stark, his wife, and the bastard son he had brought home to Winterfell – and no one else.

His father had once lain with a woman not his wife, and did the right thing. Ned Stark could not have married the woman – he was already married – but he raised the child from that union alongside his true-born children, and kept the woman's identity a secret, even from the wife he had wronged.

_I am not married._

You are betrothed.

_A betrothal is not a marriage._

Just as good. It is a binding promise. Where is the honor in breaking that promise?

_Where is the honor in sullying Jeyne's honor? _

You should have thought of that before you bedded her.

_I was … grieving. Bereft. In need of comfort. She was kind and gentle._

The raging argument he was conducting with himself was pointless. In the end, just as he knew he would have to do from the start, he chose Jeyne's honor over his own, just as his father had once chosen Jon's mother's honor over _his_ own.

**Rhaegar**

His father's madness was not a raging fire burning brightly in the beginning. It was an ember slowly growing and growing, a madness not acknowledged at first, the symptoms passed off as eccentricities. Excuses made, explanations offered, rationalizations proffered; no one was better at that than Rhaegar himself.

_His father was overly suspicious and paranoid._

But perhaps, Rhaegar thought, he had cause to be.

_His father was behaving cruelly to his own wife._

But who knew what went on inside a marriage, except the two people in it? Rhaegar's own marriage to Elia was proof of that. And his mother had maintained a dignified silence, always.

_His father was convinced of his own invincibility._

His great-grandfather, King Aegon V had ordered the marriage between Aerys and Rhaella because he was convinced that the prince who was promised would come from their line. So who's to say that Aerys himself was not special? Rhaegar thought.

There was severe disappointment in Arthur Dayne's eyes when Rhaegar ordered him - and the other Kingsguard who had made their way to Tower of Joy to find Rhaegar – to stay and guard Lyanna Stark instead of coming back with him to fight the war against Robert Baratheon.

"It's _her_ you think of, even now? There is a war! A war –"

"A war I started when I took her?" Rhaegar asked plaintively. He was not afraid of the answer. He knew what he had done, but he also knew he _had_ to do it. For the boy who would one day save the world. The prince who was promised. A greater and infinitely more dangerous threat was coming for them than Robert Baratheon and his rebel army. And the child Lyanna was carrying was the key to saving the world, Rhaegar was absolutely convinced of that.

He told Arthur all this, and more, and saw disappointment melting away into something else. To something approaching horror. He could not understand it. _I did not do it for lust! I had to do it_, he wanted to shout.

"I thought … I thought you were in love," Arthur replied. "Foolishly and recklessly in love, certainly, but in love nonetheless. But this … prophecies and dreams and the child who would save the world … this is madness. Absolute madness."

**Stannis**

"I have a duty to my king," his father had replied, when asked why he would have to sail halfway across the world to find a bride for Rhaegar Targaryen. "And a duty to Cousin Aerys," he continued.

"Isn't that the same?" Stannis had asked, mystified. 'Cousin Aerys' _was_ the king.

"Sometimes, but not always," Steffon Baratheon said. "There is our duty to the king, which is shared by all loyal subjects of the realm, of course. But there is also our duty to family, to flesh-and-blood."

"What if you have to choose between duty to your king and duty to your blood?" Stannis asked.

Steffon smiled. "Well, that is not something I would have to worry about. Cousin Aerys _is_ the king."

"What if he's not, one day?" Stannis insisted. "What if someone else is sitting on the throne?"

"Cousin Aerys is the rightful king. I would choose my duty to him over any pretender sitting on the Iron Throne."

When it was time for Stannis to choose, he chose blood over his king, after a long and painful deliberation. _Father would have done the same_, he tried to convince himself afterwards.

_Aerys is still the rightful king, _the voice lingered in his head nonetheless.


End file.
